Friday, 27 April 2012

The map above, shows in red, orange & yellow the areas that will suffer the most as a result of Jeremy Hunt's plan to cut NHS funding for the areas of England where the population do not live as long. The areas in green will benefit from the new Tory policy. Labour allocated NHS funding so that a priority was given to those in poverty, but the Tories are scrapping that formula. If you click the part of the mapthat interests you, you will see a breakdown of the age profile and poverty of that area.

Tom Gorman (@Tom__Gorman) has kindly put together a tabulation (here) of the age profile (over 75s) of every PCT (now CCG) in England that enabled the map to be configured. He has also shown the poorest ranked Primary Care Trusts in England (using Index of Multi-Deprivation 2010 data). From this data it is possible to calculate which areas will suffer the most when the Tories, as planned, cut NHS funding for poor areas and hand it instead to areas that live longer. The horror consequences for the poorer areas are shown in red.

As I explained in my last piece on this, in inner urban areas, and parts of the north of England, men live nowhere near as long as people do in posh areas of the south. To view the data that helped make these maps possible, follow this link. The map clearly shows that the North East will suffer badly as will inner city London, Manchester, Leeds, York, Sheffield, Liverpool, Luton, Birmingham and much more besides.

This graph highlights the folly of Lansley's (now read Hunt's) plan. It shows, for instance, that only 4% of the population in the area that Diane Abbott represents is aged 75 or over, but in the area represented say by Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) there are three times as more people who live past 75. I defy anyone to deny that the health needs of Hackney's young population that lives in much higher levels of poverty than Oliver Letwin's constituents have severe health needs that would suffer catastrophically if NHS funding was to be cut. Tory theory states that deprivation carries no extra health needs in terms of funding and that the money should be allocated instead on age profile. For the full rankings of all Primary Care Trusts both a) in terms of who has the oldest constituents b) who has the poorest constituents, see the tables below. Poorest = rank of 1 & Oldest = rank of 1.

As a matter of curiosity one of my readers request that I show a map of the areas that voted Labour in 2010 to see if there was any correlation. I include the 2010 General Election map below, and leave you to judge for yourself.